The State of California is poised to spend nearly half a billion dollars a year in each of the next five years on energy efficiency investments using funds generated from a recently closed tax loophole.

Catherine has a terrific OpEd in today’s Sacramento Bee on the benefits of using randomized control trials to pinpoint which energy efficiency investments will provide the greatest bang-for-the-buck.

Controlled trials and real data are against the self interest of the political class. Real power is the ability to be arbitrary and controlled trials may show a lot of their ideas were nonsense and decrease their options.